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Sparse foliage hide the entryway. A descending wooden passageway descends to a well-illuminated reception area. There is a operating ward, equipped with beds, cardiac monitors and ventilators. Plus shelves full of healthcare supplies, drugs and neat piles of spare clothes. In a staff room with a washing machine and kettle, doctors keep an eye on a display. It shows the flight patterns of enemy surveillance UAVs as they zigzag in the sky above.

Hospital personnel at an subterranean medical center look at a screen displaying enemy suicide and reconnaissance UAVs in the area.

Welcome to Ukraine’s covert below-ground hospital. This center opened in August and is the second of its kind, situated in eastern Ukraine not far from the combat zone and the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk oblast. “We are 6 metres below the earth. It’s the most secure method of providing help to our wounded military personnel. It also ensures healthcare workers safe,” said the clinic’s surgeon, Major the chief surgeon.

The stabilisation point handles 30-40 casualties a each day. Cases differ widely. Some have devastating limb trauma requiring amputations, or serious stomach wounds. Others can walk. The vast majority are the victims of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones, which release grenades with deadly accuracy. “Ninety per cent of our patients are from FPVs. We see few bullet injuries. This is an era of unmanned aircraft and a different kind of war,” the surgeon said.

Major Oleksandr Holovashchenko at the underground facility for treating injured troops in eastern Ukraine.

During one day last week, three military members limped into the hospital. The least severely hurt, 28-year-old Artem Dvorskyi, reported an FPV explosion had torn a small hole in his limb. “Conflict is terrible. The guy next to me, Vasyl, was fatally wounded,” he stated. “He collapsed. Subsequently the enemy forces released a another grenade on him.” He added: “Everything in the settlement is demolished. We see drones everywhere and casualties. Ours and theirs.”

Dvorskyi said his unit endured 43 days in a wooded zone near Pokrovsk, which Russia has been attempting to capture for many months. The only way to reach their location was on foot. Necessary provisions came by drone: rations and water. Seven days following he was hurt, he traveled 5km (roughly three miles), requiring three hours, to where an armoured vehicle was able to pick him up. At the clinic, a medic checked his physical condition. After treatment, a medical attendant gave him new civilian clothes: a T-shirt and a set of pale jeans.

Artem Dvorskiy, twenty-eight, said a FPV aerial device ripped a small hole in his leg.

Another patient, 38-year-old Pavlo Filipchuk, said a drone blast had left him with concussion. “I was in a trench shelter. It suddenly became black. I lost sensation anything or any sound,” he explained. “I think I was fortunate to remain alive. My cousin has been lost. There are continuous detonations.” A construction worker employed in Lithuania, he said he had come back to Ukraine and volunteered to serve days before the Russian leader's large-scale attack in early 2022.

A third soldier, a serviceman, had been hit in the back. He groaned as medical staff placed him on a medical cot, took off a bloody dressing and cleaned his two-day-old shrapnel wound. Covered in a thermal sheet, he borrowed a cellphone to call his family member. “A piece of mortar hit me. The cause was a ricochet. My condition is stable,” he informed her. What comes next for him? “To recover. This may require a few months. Subsequently, to go back to my unit. Our forces must defend our nation,” he said.

Medical staff care for Taras Mykolaichuk, who was injured in the back by a fragment of artillery shell.

Since 2022, Russia has repeatedly attacked hospitals, clinics, maternity wards and emergency vehicles. Per human rights groups, 261 health workers have been killed in nearly 2,000 assaults. This subterranean hospital is built from four steel bunkers, with timber beams, earth and sand laid on top up to the surface. It can withstand direct hits from large-caliber projectiles and even multiple eight-kilogram explosive devices dropped by drone.

The Ukrainian steel and mining company, which funded the construction, plans to erect twenty units in all. A senior official of the nation's national security council and ex- defence minister, the official, declared they would be “vitally important for preserving the survival of our armed forces and assisting troops on the battlefront.” The organization referred to the initiative as the “most ambitious and demanding” it had implemented after the enemy's invasion.

An example of the facility's surgical rooms.

The surgeon, explained certain injured soldiers had to endure delays hours or even days before they could be transported because of the threat of air assaults. “Our facility received a pair of critically ill patients who arrived at the early hours. It was necessary to carry out a removal of both limbs on a patient. His tourniquet had been on for so long there was no alternative.” What is his method with severe operations? “I’ve been medicine for two decades. You have to concentrate,” he said.

Medical assistants transported the soldier through the tunnel and into an ambulance. The vehicle was stationed under a bush. The patient and the two other military members were transferred to the city of a major city for additional medical care. The underground medical team took a break. The hospital’s orange feline, the mascot, padded up to the entrance to await the next arrivals. “Our facility operates active around the clock,” the surgeon stated. “The work is continuous.”